9 Language and Gender

Biological/Social & Cultural

Evident in feminists linguistics, the language itself is biased and has a crucial role in determining 'real-world' imbalances.

an approach which presents women's language behaviour as deficient in comparison with men's, and which implies that men's language behaviour is the norm from which women's deviates

a tag question is a tag in question form

1) Tags that seek information
2) Tags that try to elicit conversation
3) Seek corrobation for a personal opinion

1) Modal meaning, they indicate how certain the speaker is about a proposition. 'She's coming around noon, isn't she?' They are speaker-oriented.

2) Affective meaning, the most common of which oil the wheels of conversation they FACILITATE contributions to an interaction, facilitative tags are supportive, 'addressee-oriented'

'yeah', 'mhm', 'oh'

1) The trend which focused on interactional discourse and which investigated the functions of linguistic features.

2) The trend which restyled women's language as cooperative and supportive rather than hesitant and unconfident.

'uncertainty indicators' --> 'I think', 'you know' or 'sort of'

'It interprets language and language behaviours as effects of male dominance.'

It interprets behaviours in the context of the different 'cultures' that women and men inhabit

A society in which much social and cultural practice is organized around the belief that the belief that the male is the superior sex.

Refers to gender as an effect of behaviours, as something which is continuously constructed through performance

the view that the biological differences between the sexes are echoed by essentially female and male ways of behaving